The results were revealing in other interesting ways. A staff person rated how similar the participants were to the accomplice in terms of demeanor, grooming, and overall appearance and confidence. As illustrated in Figure 1.1, most of the movement in self-esteem occurred for those participants who resembled Mr. Dirty—that is, those who appeared to have “inferior” characteristics themselves. They must have felt the contrast with the superior applicant most acutely, as their reports of self-esteem, when compared to Mr. Clean, took a big hit. But they also benefited most if they were lucky enough to be in the Mr. Dirty condition—comparing themselves to someone at least equally inferior appeared to give them a much-needed boost. Interestingly, participants rated as having superior characteristics were little affected by either accomplice. If anything, comparison with the superior applicant made them feel better. Perhaps the comparison confirmed their own feelings of superiority.
Figure 1.1. The association of resembling Mr. Clean or Mr. Dirty with self-esteem. Participants resembling Mr. Dirty had lower self-esteem after comparing themselves with Mr. Clean and higher self-esteem after comparing themselves with Mr. Dirty. In contrast, participants resembling Mr. Clean had no change in self-esteem after comparing themselves with Mr. Dirty and slightly greater self-esteem after comparing themselves with Mr. Clean.
INFERIORITY IN OTHERS AND SCHADENFREUDE
It is hard to overstate the far-reaching advantages of superiority, as well as the obvious disadvantages of inferiority. The implications for understanding many instances of schadenfreude are important as well. Most of us are motivated to feel good about ourselves; we look for ways to maintain a positive sense of self.15 One reliable way to do this is to discover that we are better than others on valued attributes. When our self-esteem is shaky, comparing ourselves with someone inferior can help us feel better.
A series of studies by Dutch social psychologists Wilco van Dijk, Jaap Ouwerkerk, Yoka Wesseling, and Guido van Koningsbruggen gives strong support for this way of thinking.16 In one study, participants read an interview with a high-achieving student who was later found to have done a poor job on her thesis. Before reading the interview, as part of what appeared to be a separate study, they also filled out a standard self-esteem scale. Participants’ feelings about themselves were very much related to how much pleasure they later felt after learning about the student’s failure (items such as “I couldn’t resist a little smile” or “I enjoyed what happened”): the worse they felt about themselves, the more pleasing was this student’s failure. The explanation for these findings was reinforced by a closer analysis using a different measure. Immediately after reading about the high-achieving student, participants indicated whether reading about the student made them feel worse about themselves by comparison. The analysis showed that the tendency for participants with low self-esteem to feel pleased over the student’s poorly done thesis was linked precisely with also feeling that they compared poorly with this student. In other words, when the participants with low self-esteem felt schadenfreude, they had also felt the earlier sting of comparing poorly with the student.
A second study added further evidence. The procedure was exactly the same, except that half of the participants, immediately after reading the interview with the high-achieving student but before learning about her academic misfortune, were given a prompt to think “self-affirming” thoughts about their important values. The other half did not get this opportunity. Only this latter group showed the same pattern of reaction as in the first study. Participants in the first group, because self-affirming thoughts may have prevented the unpleasant effects of the social comparison, were less inclined to find the student’s academic misfortune pleasing.
There is nothing like a little success to blunt the influence of low self-esteem. I noted earlier that Frank Sinatra had the kind of talent to flatten the hopes of other singers. But even Sinatra went through a rough period in his career, and his self-esteem was at a low ebb by the end of the 1940s. Then he got the role of Maggio in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity and won the Oscar for best supporting actor. His psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, watched on television as Sinatra received it, and said to his wife, “That’s it, then. I won’t be seeing him anymore!” And he never did. Winning the Oscar was hugely self-affirming and was the start of a lasting comeback.
A third study by the Dutch researchers (van Dijk et al.) added yet another wrinkle. The starting point of the first two studies was existing variations in self-esteem. This time, the researchers “created” variations in self-esteem by giving false performance feedback to participants and then examined how they responded to others’ misfortune. Each participant performed a task described as highly linked with intellectual ability and was told that he or she scored among the worst 10 percent of the population (a control group received no feedback). Then the participant read a national magazine article that described a student who had tried to impress people at a party by renting an expensive car. But, after arriving and while trying to park the car, the student drove it into a nearby canal, causing severe damage to the car. Sure enough, participants receiving the negative feedback on intellectual ability found the misfortune more enjoyable than did those in the control condition who did not receive such feedback.17 As the 17th-century writer François de la Rochefoucauld expressed in a maxim, “If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.”18
Thanks to the ingenuity of these researchers, we have a store of evidence demonstrating that people who stand to gain psychologically from another person’s misfortune indeed get a boost to self-esteem from comparing themselves with someone suffering a setback. People with low self-esteem and those who have experienced threat to self-esteem seem especially likely to benefit. Schadenfreude provides one way of spotting this process.
THE EVOLUTIONARY ROOTS OF SOCIAL COMPARISON
Evolutionary psychology highlights the important role of social comparisons in everyday life and also helps explain why inferiority in others should be pleasing. A simple fact crucial to understanding how evolution works is that people differ in ways that consistently matter in terms of survival and reproduction. Differences that provide advantages for survival contribute to natural selection. Much of life comes down to a competitive striving for superiority on culturally prized dimensions: to gain the status and many-splendored spoils following from such status. Superiority, literally, makes the difference. Attributes that underlie greater dominance or prestige compared to rivals allow us to rise in the pecking order and accrue benefits as a result. For these reasons alone, human beings should be highly attuned to variations in rank on any attributes that grant them advantages. And, given the huge adaptive implications of rank and status, inferiority should feel bad and superiority should feel good.19
How much we attend to social comparisons is nowhere more obvious than in the mating game. This makes sense in evolutionary terms because reproductive advantage is the bottom line. Survival means that our genetic material survives us (in our offspring), not so much that we survive individually. Thus, we must mate—and mating with those who give our offspring adaptive superiority is the name of this competitive game.20
Interestingly, couples are usually matched in terms of physical attractiveness. Why is it so? As much as we may desire to mate with the most attractive person around, we are competing against others with the same goal. Any overture we make must be reciprocated if the relationship is to proceed, and overreaching on this valued dimension usually doesn’t work. It leads to rejection.
In a graduate course I teach, I use a classroom demonstration to dramatize this point.21 The 15 or so students in the class are randomly given folded index cards that have their physical attractiveness “mate value” indicated inside (ranging from 1 to 15). They open up the cards and place them on their foreheads such that only others are aware of the value on the card. Ignoring their sex, they are told to pair up with someone with the highest mate value they can fi
nd. The pairing is initiated by offering to shake a potential mate’s hand. If the offer is accepted, then the pair is complete. Rejected offers require that the person keep making offers until an offer is accepted.
As things progress, a small number of unhappy people wander about until, finally, even they find a mate. Then everyone guesses their own mate value and writes it down before seeing the actual value. They also rate their satisfaction with their pairing. Using a computer, I quickly enter actual and perceived values and ratings of mate satisfaction. Simply correlating these values is instructive. First, actual values are highly correlated. People pair up with those of similar value. Second, actual and perceived mate values are also highly correlated. It only takes a rejection or two to realize that one is not high on the attractiveness totem pole. Finally, mate values, both perceived and actual, are highly correlated with satisfaction. Attractive pairs are pleased; unattractive pairs are not. The demonstration is artificial, of course, but it dramatizes the consequences of ranking in one important area of life. People easily sense their mate value from how they are treated by others, and their feelings of satisfaction parallel actual and perceived mate values.
For our primitive ancestors living in closely knit tribes, it would have been important to be superior relative to other group members because it would have enhanced competitive advantage. Economist Robert Frank notes an interesting benefit to relativistic thinking. He argues that the rule of thumb, “do the best you can,” leads to a quandary. When can you conclude that you have done enough? Frank suggests that the relativistic rule “do better than your nearest competitor” solves this problem in an efficient way.22 The adaptive goal is to be better than your competitor, not to keep on achieving ad infinitum. Having a natural focus on social comparisons should lead to efficient actions: stop striving when you have a clear relative advantage; this is the signal to get off the treadmill. The process of evolution is likely to disfavor those who are fully at ease having low status because those with low status have less access to resources and are less preferred by potential mates.23 No wonder there is mounting evidence that lower status is related to an array of ill effects on health and longevity.24 Most people are unhappy with low status, and this is adaptive to a degree—a signal to do something about it. Similarly, most people are happy with high status. This is also adaptive—a signal of having achieved the benefits of high status. This happy feeling is something to anticipate and seek, as well as to relish.
One route to high status and its pleasures is through the reduction in status of others, especially those of higher status. As the pioneering evolutionary psychologist David Buss suggests, the anticipated pleasure of seeing higher status people fail serves an adaptive goal as well: to bring about these misfortunes, the relative gain that results, and the experience of this pleasure.25
The adaptive benefits of a keen sensitivity to relative differences are supported by observing a parallel tendency in primates, who share great genetic similarity to humans. Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University trained a group of capuchin monkeys in what they called a “no-fair” game.26 The monkeys were trained in pairs to hand a small rock to a researcher in exchange for a food reward, either a slice of cucumber or a grape, their much preferred food. When both received cucumber slices, both seemed satisfied. But when one received a cucumber slice and the other received a grape, the monkey receiving the cucumber became upset. The relative quality of rewards appeared as important as their presence versus their absence. As the lead researcher Sarah Brosnan noted, these disadvantaged monkeys “would literally take the cucumber from me and then drop it on the ground or throw it on the ground, or when I offered it to them they would simply turn around and refuse to accept it.”27 These monkeys’ reactions seemed to mirror what we see in ourselves when we are unfairly treated, relatively speaking: if we can’t have the best, don’t bother us with second best.
Even canines appear to show a concern over unequal treatment. The celebrated 18th-century scholar Samuel Johnson suggested that some people are superficial in their thinking and, in this sense, that they are like dogs and “have not the power of comparing.” They snatch the piece next to them, taking “a small bit of meat as readily as a large” even when they are side by side.28 A study on dog behavior indicates that Johnson may have underestimated canine abilities. A group of researchers at the University of Vienna examined domestic canines’ behavior. Paired dogs were given either a high-quality reward (sausage) or a low-quality reward (brown bread) if they placed a paw in the experimenter’s hand. Consistent with Johnson’s claims, the dogs seemed indifferent to the reward quality, even when they received the brown bread rather than the sausage. However, one procedural variation created a different reaction. When one dog received either of these rewards and the other got nothing, this seemed to make the disadvantaged dog much slower at offering his paws and more likely to disobey the command entirely. The disadvantaged dogs became more agitated and appeared to avoid the gaze of their advantaged partners. The researchers inferred from these findings that the dogs were having a negative “emotional” reaction to the unequal distribution—at least if being disadvantaged meant getting nothing. One piece was as good as the next, but “nothing” was upsetting when the other dog got something.29 If dogs appear bothered by disadvantage, we can easily infer that most humans will be at least as concerned.
There are important cultural variations in how much social comparisons affect people’s emotions.30 But if I meet people who doubt how powerful social comparisons can be, I often put aside the research evidence and evolutionary theory and ask them if they have kids. If they do, I ask what would happen if they treated one child more favorably than another. Their faces usually animate with instant memories of family clashes caused by making this mistake. They remember the fireworks, the wails of unfairness, and the leftover resentments. They typically need no more convincing, but, primed in this way, I complete the point by telling them of the challenges my wife and I had in giving out popcorn to our two daughters when they were very young. Popcorn and movies were a compulsory pairing, and, from the beginning of this tradition, our daughters often quarreled over who received more popcorn. The only way to avoid an argument was to take delicate care in making sure the mound of popped kernels in each matching bowl was exactly equal. Nevertheless, one often would claim the other was getting more and was “always” favored. Sometimes we tried to snatch a teaching moment out of the sibling conflict: “Does it really matter who gets more? And why not ask for the bowl with the smaller amount? Be happy that your sister is getting more,” and so on. As readers might expect, our teaching moments were usually no match for what our daughters perceived as favoritism. Now that they are grown, we laugh about these times. But the raw distress over disadvantage they showed when they were young is good evidence for the natural concerns people have over social comparisons.
In my introductory social psychology course, I take a different tack to show the importance of social comparisons. As social psychologist Mark Alicke demonstrates in many experiments, people are usually self-serving in their beliefs about how they compare with others. This “better-than-average effect” is very easily demonstated.31 One classroom activity that works spectacularly well begins by asking two questions, answered anonymously by each student, on a single sheet of paper:
1. How good is your sense of humor?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
much worse
much better
than the average
than the average
college student
college student
2. How good is your math ability?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
much worse
much better
than the average
than the average
college student
college student
After collecting the responses, I ask a few volunteers to do a quick tally of the responses. Figure 1.2 shows rou
ghly what emerged when I conducted the exercise in a class of more than 100 students. For sense of humor, the distribution describes a near impossibility. Just about everyone in the class is reporting themselves above average. Most students see themselves as way above average. When it comes to sense of humor, this is easy to do. A highly subjective judgment lends itself to bias, and we seize the opportunity to see ourselves in a flattering way. The second distribution for perceived math ability shows the bias as well, but it is not nearly as extreme. Math ability is more objectively determined than sense of humor, and our judgments on such domains are more likely to be anchored by actual standing. And yet, even so, most people manage to see themselves as above average here as well.
Figure 1.2. Biased perceptions of relative standing. Students rated their sense of humor (top panel) and their math ability (bottom panel) compared to the average college student. Most rated themselves at or above the midpoint (number 4 on the scale).
The Joy of Pain Page 3
